SYDNEY, Australia — A jealous Australian man has been convicted of murdering his Canadian fiancée in the summer of 2011 by throwing her off a downtown Sydney high-rise balcony in a “fit of rage.”

A judge found that Simon Gittany killed Lisa Harnum when he threw her off the 15th-floor balcony of their apartment.

Harnum, a former ballerina who grew up near Toronto, was 30 years old when she died.

Gittany, 37 at the time of the murder, barely moved as the judge said she was satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that he had murdered Harnum.

Gittany’s girlfriend, Rachelle Louise, screamed “You’re wrong!” as the court was told the verdict and she kept screaming for several minutes outside the court.

Speaking outside court, Harnum’s mother, Joan, said there are no winners in this case and that “two families have had their lives dramatically changed forever.”

The court had heard how sixty-nine seconds before Harnum died, a hallway security camera installed by her jealous fiancé captured him violently dragging her back into their home, his hand over her mouth.

Seconds later, the same camera captured Simon Gittany clutching his head in evident distress on his way down to the lobby in an elevator (as revealed in the video below).

Two vastly different theories of her death were floated at his trial, which Gittany, free on bail since January, 2011, had attended with his new girlfriend.

In the first, a jealous and possessive Gittany took control over Harnum’s life, ordered her not to look at other men, monitored her text messages, and then, in a rage at her attempt to leave him, threw her over the balcony of their rented apartment, purse and all.

A police officer would later find a note torn to bits in her jeans pocket, with a heart-stopping message: “There are surveillance cameras inside and outside the house.”

Her mother Joan, who had travelled from Ottawa to testify, similarly described her daughter’s fearful attempts to leave him.

“I told her if things got really bad, just to grab her passport and purse and get out, that her things don’t matter,” Joan Harnum said.

In the second theory, advanced by Gittany’s defence, a troubled young woman who had been treated for an eating disorder, killed herself, perhaps by accident, in the midst of merely threatening to jump. Or, maybe, she executed a “ballerina style jump” over the railing, which would explain why her fingerprints were not on it.

In closing arguments two weeks ago, Gittany’s lawyer Philip Strickland urged the judge not to disregard the “likelihood that out of desperation, Lisa Harnum voluntarily climbed over the balustrade to escape Simon Gittany or as a cry for attention.”

“Or one can not eliminate the possibility she intended to kill herself,” he said.

He also urged the judge to be skeptical of an eyewitness who testified he saw Gittany, shirtless, unload what he then believed to be garbage from his balcony. The witness was about 200 metres away, and Gittany is wearing a shirt in the videos.

Another witness said he saw Gittany look over the railing, then pump his fist in the air.

In the age of the ever-present camera, the trial was offered several video clips as evidence, including a public marriage proposal, below. There was her declaration that he has given her “the gift of God,” and clips of her swinging a golf club and dancing to “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers.

But the surveillance tapes cut to the core of the matter, both those maintained by Gittany and by the building in which they lived. But as his lawyer pointed out, there was no footage from two interior cameras of what happened in the minute or so between Gittany dragging her into the apartment in a choke hold, and her falling to the ground, hitting an awning on the way down.

There was other evidence, or the revealing absence of it. There were no marks of struggle, no scratches or bruises, no torn hair or streaked blood or scraped skin under the dead woman’s fingernails. The apartment was neat, with no sign of a mortal struggle.

“The Crown’s portrayal of the relationship between the accused and the deceased was selective and it did not portray the complete picture,” said Strickland, the defence lawyer, who acknowledged some of the jealous behaviour.

“They still had a warm and light-hearted and affectionate relationship,” he said.